Guns at the school board? Granbury, stop that. Police must enforce Texas weapons laws
The irate guy in the straw cowboy hat was packing what looked like a pistol on his hip.
In his menacing speech to the Granbury school board June 13, he told trustees, “We know where you live.”
An off-duty officer called city police. It’s a felony to carry a gun on school property.
But Granbury police did ... absolutely nothing.
It was one of the uglier moments in a year of nasty school board confrontations.
In the latest example of how a strife-torn Texas town has become numb to hostility and threats, city police didn’t even detain or question 81-year-old Cliff Criswell of Granbury about what they said was a pistol on his hip during a perturbed tirade against trustees, “pornographic books” and “Democratic socialists.”
Refusing to wrap up when his allotted 5 minutes ended, Criswell grew more upset.
He called out the names of board President Barbara Townsend, Superintendent Jeremy Glenn and most trustees, warning: “I’ve got something for you” and “We have profile sheets .... We know what you do. We know where you live.”
Earlier, Criswell had announced that he has cancer and “made up my mind to come up here.”
According to a police report, that’s when a Granbury police officer in the crowd started to get worried.
The officer, off duty and in street clothes, had noticed Criswell’s untucked, long-tailed shirt covering what the officer said was a black gun in a leather holster.
The officer wrote that he “kept a close eye on him.”
Criswell exceeded his time and started becoming “visibly upset,” the officer wrote.
That’s when the officer called for an on-duty police unit and also told the school district security chief that the man had a gun.
When police arrived, according to the report, Criswell had finished his speech and began walking out with his grandson, Republican political strategist Nathan Criswell.
Even though Cliff Criswell had appeared armed and in distress, police let him leave because he was quiet by the time they arrived, according to the police report.
According to a police statement to the Hood County News, officers did not even document or identify the weapon.
Deputy Chief Cliff Andrews wrote to the News: “GPD will review the incident internally and take steps to ensure this does not happen in the future.”
Three years ago, Nathan Criswell was among activists who supported Hood County commissioners’ legally meaningless vote to declare the county a “Second Amendment sanctuary” for guns.
Like school districts across America, Granbury has been the target of volatile political campaign attacks challenging lessons and library content on race, sex and gender.
The school district made national news for a Jan. 10 meeting at which Glenn was recorded telling librarians that if they disagreed on politics: “You better hide it. Here in this community, we’re going to be conservative.”
That was about the same time box after box of books labeled “Krause’s List” were removed from the library and reviewed after state Rep. Matt Krause, a Haslet-area Republican, requested more information about whether 850 books were in Texas school libraries.
Constable Chad Jordan, who years ago sent emails suggesting all peace officers should join the extremist Oath Keepers, dispatched deputies to investigate whether any library books were pornographic.
Almost all the books were returned, except for a few removed for explicit language.
According to the Hood County News, school board meetings will now include signs specifically prohibiting firearms, already broadly banned on school property.
Townsend told the newspaper that a second person at the June 13 meeting also appeared to have a gun but left when asked.
Look, most Texas gun owners are proud to be “good guys.” They don’t want anyone carrying a weapon around school property who isn’t supposed to have one.
Now if police will just enforce our laws.
This story was originally published July 8, 2022 at 12:39 PM.
